Eunseo shook his head back and forth, trying by any means to stop the tears. But whether something really was broken or not, no matter how much time passed or what he tried, his cheeks only kept getting wetter.
“Executive Director….”
“Yes.”
“How am I… supposed to….”
What am I supposed to do… Every day, another corner of his mind got painted over in white. If only it were just paint. Terrified that it might truly have been erased, every morning he burrowed into the blankets and searched for the memories and reason he might have dropped.
No matter how luxurious the space, being alone all day without saying a single word or doing a single meaningful thing was more than he could bear. The housekeeper never looked at him, and neither did the bodyguards. Several times a day he had to wonder whether he’d become a ghost who didn’t exist.
To that Shin Eunseo, Han Jaeheon was the only person who treated him like a human being. Choking to death on loneliness, he could only breathe when Jaeheon came. That was what Han Jaeheon was to Shin Eunseo now. Definitions of their relationship didn’t matter — he was the only one.
“…Executive Director.”
Eunseo half-perched on Jaeheon’s thigh and kissed the corner of his mouth. At that obedient gesture, Jaeheon pulled Eunseo’s head back by the nape and meshed their lips deep. Then he pulled away and whispered, their lips nearly touching,
“You want to go out that badly?”
He almost answered yes without thinking, but Eunseo shook his head instead.
“At least you’re not completely clueless.”
“But not today.”
Jaeheon, who had shoved Eunseo back into the pit of despair, stood to leave for work, and Eunseo followed him to the front door without realizing it. Once he was gone, Eunseo would be alone again.
“I’ll come home early.”
“…Okay.”
Gazing up at him with pleading eyes without meaning to, Eunseo filled his lungs deep with the stale air coming through the briefly opened door. Then the door slammed shut with a bang.
He couldn’t bear it whether Jaeheon was there or not. Eunseo walked slowly and wedged himself into the farthest corner of the living room — the spot that got the most sunlight in the morning hours. But looking down, he realized he was still trapped in an apartment dozens of floors up, and he fled to the bedroom as if running away and pulled the blanket over his head.
The fact that he was sleeping so much was almost a relief. Eunseo slept nearly sixteen hours a day. Waking, he would wander the rooms aimlessly, and in the afternoon he would go to the room with the floor-to-ceiling glass facing west and press himself against the window.
“…….”
Not even talking to himself would come out. Watching the sunset-stained sky, Eunseo realized it had been so long since he’d felt sunlight directly on his skin. That must be why he’d been chasing the sun around like a sunflower.
He leaned his forehead against the slightly warm glass and closed his eyes. He wished he could fall asleep like this and never wake up.
***
His body floated, light as air. Startled awake by the strange sensation, Eunseo leaned without thinking into the faint silhouette of a person, feeling oddly relieved. Sweet pheromones wrapped him softly from head to toe, as if recalling the fetal days he had no memory of.
He was buried in the soft bed, but he wanted to stay in those arms. They were hard past firm, a little stiff, closer to uncomfortable than comfortable — but they were the only ones. But Jaeheon laid him on the bed and walked straight out.
Eunseo curled up a little dejectedly, pulling the blanket to his shoulders with his back to the door. What would happen if Jaeheon grew tired of him like this? Could he go back to the company? Or would he have to find an entirely different path? To Shin Eunseo, an ordinary person who had never imagined ending up in a situation like this, even predicting what came next was impossible.
The closed door opened again. Pheromones drifted in, smelling of sandalwood body wash mixed with water, and soon settled in behind Eunseo.
“You’re awake, aren’t you?”
Jaeheon stroked his hair gently, then wound it around his finger and played with it as usual. Then he gave it a light tug, fully waking Eunseo and turning him to face him.
“Why are you pretending to sleep?”
“…You’re back.”
“You knew I was here all along.”
As if he hadn’t asked expecting an answer, Jaeheon went on without a pause.
“What did you do today?”
It was an unexpected question. In this place, all Jaeheon ever did to Eunseo was order him to eat something, and rape him
“…….?”
“Hm?”
As Eunseo only moved his lips without speaking, Jaeheon brought his face closer. Pressured into saying something — anything — Eunseo managed a single sentence.
“…I watched the sun.”
“And then?”
“I slept, too….”
“I ate… too.”
“What did you eat?”
“Beef soup and braised butterfish….”
The housekeeper seemed to be keeping track of how much Eunseo ate each time — he could tell from watching her photograph his food before and after he ate.
“You didn’t eat much, though.”
He’d managed the first couple of spoonfuls, but then the nausea had surged up again and he couldn’t bring himself to eat any more. It wasn’t that Eunseo didn’t want to eat. He’d half given up on escaping this house, but he knew better than anyone that if he ever got out of it, he would need to eat to get back to a normal life even a little faster.
“I was trying. To eat.”
But… could he ever leave? He was Jaeheon’s plaything, and one day Jaeheon might forget him and never come looking. Then… could he leave? Or would he die alone in this luxurious house?
For a long while, Jaeheon stroked Eunseo’s hair and his long, white nape. Every time those fingertips touched him, Eunseo flinched and trembled with fear.
“Do you want to go out?”
“Even just a walk….”
“You’ll just try to run away again.”
“No, I won’t run,” Eunseo shook his head hard. Then he glanced at Jaeheon’s expression. His last escape attempt had been about two weeks ago, and that act had made every sharp object in the house disappear. He’d known the bodyguards were outside even if he got the door lock open — it had been nothing but a desperate struggle.
“I won’t run. I won’t go.”
As Eunseo added that urgently, Jaeheon looked steadily at his face, as if judging whether the words were true, and Eunseo tensed until his insides stung.
“Starting tomorrow, I’ll give you two hours a day.” Eunseo’s eyes went so wide they looked like they’d roll out of his head, and Jaeheon let out a small laugh.
“But you can’t leave the apartment complex.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll give you a card in the morning, so buy yourself anything you want to eat.” Eunseo nodded fervently, and Jaeheon added one more warning.
“Only buy food.”
“Okay, okay….”
A question — why all of a sudden — rose in him, but Eunseo didn’t make the mistake of voicing it. Jaeheon was always unpredictable; all he could do was assume he was in a slightly good mood today.
“Go to sleep now.”
“Though I doubt you’ll sleep, since you sleep so much.”
Would he really do nothing tonight? Thinking of the almost-violent sex that had continued nearly every night, Eunseo shivered slightly. He felt both at once — afraid of it happening, afraid of it not.
***
After staring for a long time at the card Jaeheon had given him before work, Eunseo wandered from room to room getting ready to go out. He washed up, dressed, and when he stood at the front door, a pair of sneakers sat there that hadn’t been there the day before. The brand-new white sneakers seemed to beckon him to put them on quickly.
Was he really allowed to go out? Was this another test, another trap of Jaeheon’s? He stood at the door, went back inside, paced the living room — back and forth dozens of times — and finally managed to put the sneakers on. Every day felt like standing at the edge of a cliff.
He knocked on the steel door a few times and heard it opening from the outside. The door he had strained so hard to open without success — the bodyguards opened it this easily.
They silently stepped aside to let him pass, and Eunseo stood before the elevator. The number 15 was stamped large above the elevator doors. The fifteenth floor… so that was where he was. It wasn’t as high as he’d expected, but he couldn’t quite understand why he’d been so frightened — and yet the terror of looking down had been so visceral that cold sweat soaked Eunseo’s back, only to dry again just as quickly.
Riding the elevator down, Eunseo was nearly driven mad by a nameless dread, but the moment the doors opened and he saw the sunlit lobby, he half-ran toward it without realizing.
“Ah….”
The sunlight on his arms was warm. Standing before the doors, he dithered, unable to bring himself to step outside — and only after a long while did Eunseo finally step down the stone stairs and fully outside.
It was strange. He couldn’t feel whether his feet were really on the ground, whether he had really come outside — it didn’t feel real. Was he dreaming? Or had he already gone mad? It felt so wrong that Eunseo slapped his own cheek, hard.
“…It hurts?”
It hurt too much for this to be strange. Blinking in the glaring sunlight, Eunseo just walked slowly along the path. Then he spotted the main gate leading out of the complex, stepped back a little, and chose a different fork in the road.
Running now was not the right choice. Three bodyguards were following him, and in his condition he wouldn’t get far anyway. Besides, he had no money, and no idea where a tracker or listening device might be planted.
The complex wasn’t very big, but there were plenty of children and people walking their dogs. Seeing the bodyguards trailing behind Eunseo, though, everyone hurriedly kept their distance. Eunseo had neither the courage nor the intention to speak to them anyway, so he tried not to care, but he felt a little dejected.
For the number of buildings, the complex had a great many parks and wooded paths — enough to wander around in. After walking about thirty minutes, Eunseo sat down carefully on a bench along a path lined with fairly large trees.
Though the weather was nearly summer, a still-slightly-cool breeze brushed his cheeks in the shade. Staring blankly into space, Eunseo just breathed — in deep, out, over and over.
As he spent a good while like that, a rustling sound — different from the wind — kept reaching his ears. He stared tensely at the moving bushes, and a small cat darted out from inside.
“Ah, a cat….”
Startled, Eunseo gazed at the small, thin calico cat that didn’t look fully grown. About five paces away, the cat began grooming itself. Watching it lick itself here and there, giving itself a dry wash, Eunseo jumped up and ran to the mart inside the complex that he’d passed on his walk.
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